An Angry World

 

Thursday, February 16, 2023

Why are the nations so angry?  Psalm 2:1

My mother was not a person prone to anger.  I can only recall seeing her lose it one time, when my dog ate the ingredients for a cake she was going to make for an upcoming birthday.  He only ate the sugar, frosting, and butter; he spread the flour all around the kitchen…every nook and cranny; it was the Pillsbury cloud! Come to think of it, that was also the time I heard the only cuss word ever to drop from her lips!  She chased my dog around the house with that big wooden spoon.  She never caught him…probably a good thing; if she had caught-up with the beast it might have completed the deadly sins triple-crown: anger, cussing, and murder!

The decades which followed World War II were, for me, was what it was like to live in Andy Griffith’s world, with Aunt Bea, Barney Fife, Gomer Pile, and Opie.  My summer days were spent exploring Miller’s woods, playing with frogs, and swimming at Stump Pond with the snapping turtles.  We rode bikes, and played “cowboys and Indians”.

That childhood is a fond memory, but it was not perfect.  We also had the threat of nuclear bombs dropping on us, drills in school; when that burst of bells rang, we all scrambled to see who could be first to get under our desks.  (To this day I still wonder who thought that up…a child’s wooden desk as protection from a nuclear blast?)

Interpersonal relationships were light years different than currently.  If a boy got a little flustered and dropped a “bad word” (anything stronger than darn), especially in front of a girl child or two, culture demanded an immediate apology.  Sex was only mentioned in school while dissecting frogs in Science class.  The internet of today may have developed its’ lightning-fast information-sharing from the way inappropriate behavior at school reached a child’s mother and dad before you got off the bus that afternoon.

As gentle and non-violent as my Mom was 99.99% of the days of her life, she would have stood out like a sore thumb in today’s culture.  Today’s foulness of language and angry in-your-face, stay-out-of-my-space, while I act out my sexual preferences for all the world to see on Instagram and Face Book, is the perfect medium for developing the attitude that, no suppressed wish to grab a gun and obliterate those who have angered you, will go unchecked.  The tantrum of an undeveloped sense of self-control is punctuated by the sound of semi-automatic gunfire.  And the weeping of Godly-grieving over this angry world is faintly heard from above.

For You Today  

Grieving the loss of what once was…even if that grief is somewhat biased by the rose-colored glasses of an old man’s memory of a so-called better day…is not to suggest we have nothing to which we can look forward.  Rather it just gives the appropriate frame for what God has promised.  To do that, let’s let apostle Paul have today’s last word, about the good that is coming, which will dispel the darkness of harsh times of anger in this world in which we live.  Paul writes to the Thessalonian believers:

…we want you to know what will happen to the believers who have died so you will not grieve like people who have no hope.  For the Lord himself will come down from heaven with a commanding shout, with the voice of the archangel, and with the trumpet call of God.  First, the believers who have died will rise from their graves.  Then, together with them, we who are still alive and remain on the earth will be caught up in the clouds to meet the Lord in the air. Then we will be with the Lord forever. So encourage each other with these words.  1 Thessalonians 4:13-17

You chew on that as you hit the Rocky Road; have a blessed day!

Go to VIDEO (read by author)

There are about 2,000 devotional posts and 400 sermons in the Rocky Road Devotions library.  To dig deeper on today’s topic, explore some of these: 

Advice for the Mighty  and  Now Then, You Kings, Act Wisely  and  Short Fuse  and So Much Anger 

Images:  Title Pixabay.com   Images without citation are either personal property of the author, or in public domain.

Unless noted, Scripture quoted from The New Living Translation^©   

The RIGHT Way to Go

 

Wednesday, February 15, 2023

My child, listen to what I say, and treasure my commands.  Tune your ears to wisdom, and concentrate on understanding.  Cry out for insight, and ask for understanding.  Search for them as you would for silver; seek them like hidden treasures.  Then you will understand what it means to fear the Lord, and you will gain knowledge of God.  For the Lord grants wisdom!  From his mouth come knowledge and understanding.  He grants a treasure of common sense to the honest.  He is a shield to those who walk with integrity.  He guards the paths of the just and protects those who are faithful to him.  Then you will understand what is right, just, and fair, and you will find the right way to go.  For wisdom will enter your heart, and knowledge will fill you with joy.  Wise choices will watch over you.  Understanding will keep you safe.  Wisdom will save you from evil people, from those whose words are twisted.  These men turn from the right way to walk down dark paths.  They take pleasure in doing wrong, and they enjoy the twisted ways of evil.  Their actions are crooked, and their ways are wrong.  Proverbs 2:1-15

These words, usually accepted as written by Solomon, come from a lifetime of a wise man seeking the right way to live a meaningful life.  Solomon’s methodology was not much different from yours or mine; we learn through trial and error’s school of hard-knocks.  In Ecclesiastes Solomon wrote:

So I set out to learn everything from wisdom to madness and folly. But I learned firsthand that pursuing all this is like chasing the wind.  Ecclesiastes 1:17

Here was a wise man who wanted to investigate every part of how people live on this planet.  What he found was most of it is empty, like a dog chasing his own tail…an overly-glorified exercise in passing the time.

Yet, in this morning’s text, Solomon’s Proverb, instructs his own son to spend his life absorbing wisdom, to chase understanding like the brass ring on the merry-go-round.  And, of course, he’s pointing to God’s commands, the words of life, which will teach his heart, soul, and mind all it needs to know so he will know how to fear (reverence) the Lord. 

At the last of his instructions, Solomon reveals the purpose of it all, keeping on the right path in this world’s quagmire of cultural madness.  The wisest of men points to the craziest of human mayhem, and gives his son the key to living a life that will not leave him ashamed at the end; he points his child to serving God’s light in the midst of a great darkness.  No matter what crooked, twisted ways of evil present themselves, one who trusts in God can walk confidently in the Lord’s care and love.

Perhaps Solomon was well beyond his time, knowing what the madness of 21^st century earth would be like, pandemics, violence, earthquakes, scams, political havoc, crumbling families, and news cycles that never make genuine sense.

For You Today  

The choices are endless.  Among them, you can follow the news on CNN, Twitter, FOX, or whatever other cultural high makes you too buzzed to see clearly…or tune-in to God’s wisdom and light.  It all depends on whether you want to have your eyes open to eternity’s understanding.

You chew on that as you hit the Rocky Road; have a blessed day!

Go to VIDEO (read by author)

There are about 2,000 devotional posts and 400 sermons in the Rocky Road Devotions library.  To dig deeper on today’s topic, explore some of these: 

Finding Wisdom  and  A Treasure of Common Sense 

Images:  Title Pixabay.com   Images without citation are either personal property of the author, or in public domain.

Unless noted, Scripture quoted from The New Living Translation^©   

The Days of Noah

Friday, November 25, 2022

Then the people began to multiply on the earth, and daughters were born to them.  The sons of God saw the beautiful women and took any they wanted as their wives.  Then the Lord said, “My Spirit will not put up with humans for such a long time, for they are only mortal flesh.  In the future, their normal lifespan will be no more than 120 years.”  In those days, and for some time after, giant Nephilites lived on the earth, for whenever the sons of God had intercourse with women, they gave birth to children who became the heroes and famous warriors of ancient times.  The Lord observed the extent of human wickedness on the earth, and he saw that everything they thought or imagined was consistently and totally evil.  So the Lord was sorry he had ever made them and put them on the earth.  It broke his heart.  And the Lord said, “I will wipe this human race I have created from the face of the earth.  Yes, and I will destroy every living thing—all the people, the large animals, the small animals that scurry along the ground, and even the birds of the sky.  I am sorry I ever made them.” ⁸ But Noah found favor with the Lord.  This is the account of Noah and his family.  Noah was a righteous man, the only blameless person living on earth at the time, and he walked in close fellowship with God.   Genesis 6:1-9

I can’t remember when, or who said it, but it was the description of a platypus being …the result of a beaver-duck-osaurous being the assembled result of the committee from Hell.  As memory serves, it may have been at a committee meeting from a church (long-ago) that shall remain anonymous!

The days in which Noah lived, where everyone did what they wanted, not regarding the lives of others, with the result being chaos of the darkest nature, are pictured in Scripture as that which broke God’s heart; it was anything but what the Lord had designed.  If you compare it to the peaceful, gentle, and beautiful setting described as Eden (before sin entered the picture), you can understand why God was so upset! 

Many years ago, when our children were still in diapers, one of them climbed out of the crib during the night and found the full container of baby powder.  In the morning when we went into the nursery the container was no longer full.  But every crack, crevice, nook, and cranny of everything else in the room had baby powder to spare! 

I compare my feeling on that morning to the events of Noah’s days, and how God must’ve felt about his children messing up the environment.  In my mind’s imaginative eye, I can see God turning on his TV to the Jerry Springer Show, or some modern reality series where the woman finds out her man’s been cheating on her with her best friend’s husband, and they were planning to divorce, elope, and adopt a platypus.  No church committee can match that, except, perhaps the committee in charge of planning an orderly and dignified gay pride parade! 

If, in light of the previous descriptions, there is any wonder left in your mind about why God decided to start-over, give me a call…I’ll paint you a picture.

For You Today  

The world news program you watch today (maybe even your local news) will be filled with 95% of the anger, hatred, killing, disaster, and whatever other horrible happenings form the core of 21^st century culture.  We are living in the days of Noah.  Our prayer should always start (and end) with:  Come, Lord Jesus!

You chew on that as you hit the Rocky Road; have a blessed day!

Go to VIDEO (read by author)

There are about 2,000 devotional posts and 400 sermons in the Rocky Road Devotions library.  To dig deeper on today’s topic, explore some of these: 

       When It Hurts So Much   and   The Thin Line Between Black Friday and Good Friday

This devotional memoir first appeared on Rocky Road Devotions entitled Thanks Dad! August 11, 2016 (updated this date)

Images:  Title Pixabay.com and WikiCommons without citation are either personal property of the author, or in public domain.

Unless noted, Scripture quoted from The New Living Translation^©   

When God Speaks and Humans Find it Difficult to Listen

Monday, September 19, 2022

This is what the Lord says:  “Don’t let the wise boast in their wisdom, or the powerful boast in their power, or the rich boast in their riches.  But those who wish to boast should boast in this alone:  that they truly know me and understand that I am the Lord who demonstrates unfailing love and who brings justice and righteousness to the earth, and that I delight in these things.  I, the Lord, have spoken!  “A time is coming,” says the Lord, “when I will punish all those who are circumcised in body but not in spirit—the Egyptians, Edomites, Ammonites, Moabites, the people who live in the desert in remote places, and yes, even the people of Judah.  And like all these pagan nations, the people of Israel also have uncircumcised hearts.”  Jeremiah 9:23-26

Our grandson, Christopher, is getting (alarmingly) close to 30.  He serves in the Air Force, stationed nearly 7,000 miles from home.  He’s a big guy (over 6’), with a big heart, and a ready wit.  As with most parents and grandparents, I tend to think of him as a young boy, riding bicycles, full of giggles and goofiness.  

I have this one scene embedded in my brain from his childhood (and replayed almost every time we talk), where he does his best Robert DeNiro imitation, turning to look at me, and intoning a very New York Taxi-driver[1] personna:  You talkin’ to ME?

God gave a message to Jeremiah that would not have placed him on the top-10 favorite people list in Jerusalem, or anywhere in our current culture.  Whenever God begins a sentence with there is a time coming, eyerolls and choruses of not this again fill the room.  I can just see the words rolling off Jeremiah’s lips on the steps of Jerusalem’s crumbling Temple, as he warns all the religious leaders and the crowd assembled for worship.  They’re right with him when he talks of punishment for Egypt, Amonites, and Moabites….Oh, yeah, God, put the hot irons to those heathen barbarians!  

But then Jeremiah quits preaching, and goes to meddling; he faces the crowd, squints a little like Clint Eastwood’s Dirty Harry character, and says:  uh….yes, even the people of Judah.  And wide-eyed, furious, the people yell:  You talkin’ to ME?

And Jeremiah (still squinting ominiously) says:  Yep…even you, Jerusalem high-brows, have uncircumcised hearts.  (Circumcision was a ritual with which they were quite familiar, a telltale physical sign they’d been born into the right family.)  Jerusalem’s elite imagined themselves as somewhat grandfathered-in when it came to being spiritually correct, and therefore accepted by God.  Jeremiah warned them a physical mark, and all the rituals in the world, didn’t get you any gold stars from heaven, unless a softened, obedient, generous, gracious heart, made your walk line-up with all your talk!

The problem with an “uncircumcised heart” is spiritual blindness.  And that is a hallmark of 21^st-Century culture.  In todays live-and-let-me-do-my-thing world, I may tolerate your racist, gender-insensitive, non-wokeness, as long as you stay out of my face with it….but when you start talking about how I might be included in your God’s torture parade…You BETTER NOT be talkin’ to ME! 

The residents of Jerusalem disliked what the prophet said, and it eventually landed him in prison.  The downturn of events for Jeremiah was painful for him, but the day IS most certainly coming when God will balance those scales!

For You Today

One question the church never has to ask of God is:  Are YOU talkin’ to US?

You chew on that as you hit the Rocky Road; have a blessed day!

Go to VIDEO (read by author)

There are about 2,000 devotional posts and 400 sermons in the Rocky Road Devotions library.  To dig deeper on today’s topic, explore some of these: 

An Empty Lament and Stumbling in Broad Daylight

[1] Images:  via Pixabay.com   Unless noted, Scripture quoted from The New Living Translation^©  

---

[1] From the 1976 Movie Taxi Driver starring Robert DeNiro

Stare Decisis

 

Tuesday, July 5, 2022

“Don’t imagine that I came to bring peace to the earth!  I came not to bring peace, but a sword.  ‘I have come to set a man against his father, a daughter against her mother, and a daughter-in-law against her mother-in-law.  Your enemies will be right in your own household!’  Matthew 10:34-36

In a 213-page document,[1] handed down from the  Supreme Court of the U.S. on June 24^th, the 1973 decision of Roe vs. Wade (favoring a Constitutional right to abortion), was overturned, returning the issue, and the power to determine such rights, back to the individual states.  One of the main factors upon which the case was decided was stare decisis.  The Latin term is defined as a doctrine or policy of following rules or principles laid down in previous judicial decisions....  Stare Decisis appears 84 times in the court’s ruling syllabus.  Something which is that central to the thinking to the court’s 5-4 decision begs our attention 

It would seem, from even a casual observance of news reports, that the entire country (and by extension, the world) is as divided as it was in World War II.  In no way do I wish to add to that divide.  However, if I understand what was presented to the court, stare decisis, upon which rested the defense’s argument to sustain Roe vs. Wade as law of the land, was ruled as inappropriate, not having been sufficiently established. 

Setting aside the celebrations, or protestations of those who are overjoyed, or those outraged by the decision, the takeaway with which we must live, is the division we have created.

If there is anything I’ve learned about stare decisis, it is as old as eternity.  God, the Father revealed himself to Moses at the burning bush as, I AM…the statement of eternal existance, covering what was, what is, and what will be.  This is the same as the declaration of Jesus:

“I am the Alpha and the Omega—the beginning and the end,” says the Lord God.  “I am the one who is, who always was, and who is still to come—the Almighty One.”  Revelation 1:8

Jesus attested to the fact that He, and everything He brought from the Father in Heaven to teach us, would be the dividing line separating even the closest of families.  The issue of life still in the womb is a strong example of that.

The principle of stare decisis demands going back to the earliest precedent.  As such, 1973’s Roe vs. Wade ruling is a decidedly modern idea.  God, who is eternal, and therefore predates even the so-called primordial ooze, is the one who gave us Exodus 20:13…do no murder.

God is also the one upon whom we received what our forefathers wrote in the Constitution we so revere, the guarantee of liberty to individuals to choose their course.  The stare dicisis of that posit demands we understand we are free, but the precedent insists we must also not infringe upon the freedom of another at any stage of this life’s journey, including the womb. 

For You Today

The 9 justices of our country’s Supreme Court took 213 pages to explain why Roe vs. Wade was wrongly-decided 50 years ago.  In two pages I find it hard to find fault with admitting a mistake.

You chew on that as you hit the Rocky Road; have a blessed day!

Go to VIDEO (read by author)

There are about 2,000 devotional posts on Rocky Road Devotions. 

To dig deeper into this topic or Scripture text:  Subway Sermon and Shattered Beyond All Hope of Repair

[1] Images:  Pixabay.com  Unless noted, Scripture quoted from The New Living Translation^©  

---

[1] Read the full document here

How to Cure a Cosmic Headache

 

Thursday, June 4, 2020

Psalm 8:1-9

O Lord, our Lord, your majestic name fills the earth!  Your glory is higher than the heavens.  You have taught children and infants to tell of your strength, silencing your enemies and all who oppose you.  When I look at the night sky and see the work of your fingers—the moon and the stars you set in place—what are mere mortals that you should think about them, human beings that you should care for them?  Yet you made them only a little lower than God and crowned them with glory and honor.  You gave them charge of everything you made, putting all things under their authority—the flocks and the herds and all the wild animals, the birds in the sky, the fish in the sea, and everything that swims the ocean currents.  O Lord, our Lord, your majestic name fills the earth!

Your head can hurt (a lot) when you start thinking of eternity and the vastness of creation.  How can you wrap your mere mortal mind around a universe which, from the moment it was created, has been expanding at a blinding rate of about 4 million miles a day.  What’s interesting to me is how much impartial, non-agenda-driven science corroborates Scripture, as opposed to stilted pseudo-science, which attempts to disprove God’s presence.  Sometimes the connections are amazing.  In the case of the Big Bang, scientists of integrity have opined that the universe appeared all at once.  In the following scientific explanation it not only says that, but also tacitly affirms the wording of Scripture, that God created ex-nihilo; meaning there wasn’t anything in existance until God spoke it into being:

The universe did not expand into space, as space did not exist before the universe, according to NASA.  Instead, it is better to think of the Big Bang as the simultaneous appearance of space everywhere in the universe.  The universe has not expanded from any one spot since the Big Bang — rather, space itself has been stretching, and carrying matter with it.[1]

Nothing existed; God spoke; everything existed and is growing.  How majestic, and consistent with let there be…and there was…and is…and ever shall be!

If there is any empirical evidence to cure the kind of cosmic headache you get when you try to expain-away God, this is it; believe Scripture, and watch the day’s events, not through the eyes and ears of CNN and 21^st century full of itself culture, but the eyes of one who has the balcony seat and sees more than just the big picture, but also Who sees the beginning from the end!

Let’s Pray Together:

Father, You are majestic, all-seeing, all-knowing, and all-powerful.  How excellent is Your name!  And though Your glory overspreads and oversees the entirety of Your expanding universe, you have chosen to be mindful of us.  As the heavens declare Your glory, Your Son, Jesus declares Your mercy and grace.

For You Today

It’s my prayer that, having intentionally drawn your attention to the infinite Lord, creator of a universe none of us can begin to comprehend, I will have messed with your comfort zone in which you imagine you have possessions, property, power, or whatever you consider your treasure.  I pray I’ve meddled enough, so as to plant in your soul the thought of letting go of all of it, in favor of praising Eternal God, the one who can cure a cosmic headache!

You chew on that as you hit the Rocky Road today.  Have a blessed day!

Go to VIDEO

Title Image:  Space.com  Unless noted, Scripture quoted from The New Living Translation©

For other posts on Psalm 8 see Wondering About the Big Stuff Part 1 and Part 2 and Part 3  and  We Mortals

---

[1] Our Expanding Universe: Age, History & Other Facts